THEMES
As nondual awareness emerges in the West in both therapists and clients, the practical and theoretical implications for psychotherapy are far-reaching. This annual cutting edge conference hosts leading therapists and teachers who are exploring the confluence of nondual wisdom and psychotherapy. How does psychotherapy change when therapists and clients awaken to and embody their true nature as open, lucid awareness that is essentially not separate from the whole of life?

This year’s conference focuses on relationship as experienced within and as the Whole, and how awakening affects all relationships – therapeutic and non-therapeutic, alike.

“…when you take yourself for somebody, all relationships are from object to object, man to woman, mother to son, personality to personality. And there is no communication, no possibility for love.” -Jean Klein

This workshop will feature a DVD interview of Jean Klein discussing intimate relationships from his unique perspective of “global awareness.” We will then clarify how these insights can be utilized in couples therapy in the following ways:
• Provide a working definition of “spiritual intimacy” as a framework for guiding therapeutic interventions
• Clarify how self/other images perpetuate dysfunctional patterns between intimate partners
• Define “imageless perception” and the role it plays in what Jean Klein describes as “seeing the Divine in one another”
• Describe three kinds of ego-transcending caring which create relationships “without a center”
Case examples will illustrate how the above pointers help assess presenting problems and create “right action” prescriptions to free partners from destabilizing blame, bickering, and boredom.

Evelyn Moschetta, DSW, and Paul Moschetta, DSW, received their doctorates in clinical social work from Yeshiva University. For fifteen years they were students of Kurt Adler, son of Alfred Adler, who along with Freud and Jung was one of the original founders of psychoanalysis. Evelyn and Paul Moschetta are marriage counselors and psychotherapists with many years of experience helping couples solve relationship problems. In 1989, as students of Jean Klein, they interviewed him on film discussing love and marriage. Since that time they have sought to articulate and integrate a nondual approach in their work with individuals and couples.
They are the authors of three books about relationships, Caring Couples, The Marriage Spirit, and Are You Roommates or Soul Mates? They maintain a full-time clinical practice in Manhattan and East Hampton, New York.

The Essential Nature of Peace and Happiness
Rupert Spira
In these meetings we look clearly at the nature of experience and discover it is not divided into a perceiving subject, “I,” and a perceived object, other, or world. The separate “I” and the separate object, other, or world are seen to be concepts, superimposed by thinking onto the reality of experience. And if we look for the reality of all experience, we find only Awareness; that is, Awareness “finds” itself. In this self-recognition, the apparently separate “I” is relieved of all conceptual superimpositions and stands revealed as the true “I” of Awareness-without limits and therefore infinite, always now, and therefore eternal, undisturbable, and therefore peace itself, free of lack, and therefore happiness itself, unbound and therefore inherently free, one with all seeming objects, and therefore beauty itself, and intimately one with all others, and therefore love itself.

From an early age Rupert Spira has been deeply interested in the nature of reality. For twenty years he studied the teachings of P.D. Ouspensky, J. Krishnamurti, Rumi, Shankaracharya, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, and Robert Adams, until he met his teacher, Francis Lucille, in 1996, who introduced him to the teachings of Jean Klein and Atmananda Krishna Menon and, more importantly, directly indicated to him the true nature of experience. Spira lives in the UK and holds regular meetings and retreats in Europe and the USA. www.rupertspira.com

Nondual Reality: The True Meeting of I and Thou
Judith Blackstone
Judith Blackstone will teach a series of attunement practices, called Realization Process, for directly experiencing nonduality, and for connecting with another person in this dimension. This workshop demonstrates how nondual realization cultivates our capacity for contact: with ourselves, with our environment, and with other human beings. It deepens all of our relational capacities, including empathy, intuition, compassion, and unconditional love. In this work, the radical openness of nonduality is realized through inward contact with one’s own body. By embodying nondual awareness, we uncover a qualitative, authentic experience of ourselves as individuals at the same time as we transcend our individuality. When two people attune to nondual awareness together, they experience mutual transparency: a single expanse of awareness pervading them both as a unity.

Judith Blackstone, PhD, developed the Realization Process, an integrated method of embodiment, psychological and relational healing, and nondual spiritual awakening. She is based in New York City and offers individual sessions, workshops, teleconference courses, and teacher trainings in the Realization Process throughout the U.S. and Europe. She is the author of The Empathic Ground, The Enlightenment Process, The Subtle Self, and The Intimate Life. She has been a student of Eastern contemplative traditions for almost forty years. She founded the Nonduality Institute in New York City. www.judithblackstone.com

Waking Up From the Dream of Romantic Love: Awakened Relationship
Lynn Marie Lumiere
We all have a deep longing for love and union that arises out of the belief that we are separate from love, and one another. This longing can lead us into nondual awakening, recognizing our unity with all that is. Unfortunately this yearning often gets misdirected into the dream of finding lasting love and fulfillment in romantic relationship. The suffering that arises from seeking love outside our Self is what causes many people to seek psychotherapy; and it is one of the primary challenges even for those who have awakened to their true nature. Together, let us explore the illusory nature of a romantic love that is rooted in separation, and what it looks like to wake up from this dream to experience awakened relationship-where true love is embodied and more fully expressed in a duet of One.

Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT, is a transpersonal and somatic psychotherapist with more than 20 years of experience working with relationship issues. She has also had a deep commitment to nondual spiritual teachings and awakening for 20 years. Her work is deeply informed by nondual wisdom and a passion for facilitating an awakening to this wisdom in others. She is one of the authors of the first book on nondual wisdom and psychotherapy, The Sacred Mirror. She is also coauthor of The Awakening West, Evidence of a Spreading Enlightenment. www.lynnmarielumiere.com

Relationship and the Undivided
Dorothy Hunt
Relationship occurs naturally in time and duality, requiring the perception of “two” even when relationship occurs between an “I” and a “myself.” Duality is not an enemy to be overcome; it is where relationship occurs in the Dream. In the realm of the purely Undivided, however, there is no relationship at all because there is no perception of distinctions. What is truly undivided can never be made into an object, yet life continually moves from this unknowable Source.

Through experiential invitations and discussion, we will explore relationship from the perspective of both identified and non-identified consciousness as it moves in the practice of psychotherapy. We will look at whether the movement of separation (egoic self-construct) can ever be an agent of healing and what effect awakened Seeing (without conceptual identification) has in the therapist/client encounter.

Dorothy Hunt, LCSW, serves as spiritual director of Moon Mountain Sangha, teaching at the request and in the spiritual lineage of Adyashanti. She is the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy and has practiced psychotherapy since 1967. A student of nondual traditions, she has an especially deep and abiding connection to Ramana Maharshi and the path of self-inquiry. She is the author of Only This! and a contributing author to both The Sacred Mirror and Listening from the Heart of Silence. www.dorothyhunt.org